Andrea Goldsmith

Chiharu Shiota: Absent bodies (Anna Schwartz Gallery)

ABR Arts • 12 October 2016

There have been a handful of occasions in my life when I have stood before a work of art intending to look at it, appraise it, only to find myself drawn into it. In some strange way I become part of the work. It is as if my imagination has merged with the imaginative space of the art work and, at the same time, any mind-body split has been dissolved. I have, simultaneously, a visceral and imaginat ... (read more)

Andrea Goldsmith reviews 'Shylock Is My Name' by Howard Jacobson

September 2016, no. 384 • 23 August 2016

Shylock Is My Name is the second novel to appear in Hogarth Press's Shakespeare Project. In this series, eight well-known novelists have each been commissioned to retell one of Shakespeare's plays for a modern audience. Jeanette Winterson launched the project with The Gap of  Time, her take on The Winter's Tale; the third in the series, the thoroughly enjoyable Vinegar Girl, a reworking of The T ... (read more)

Andrea Goldsmith reviews 'In Praise of Forgetting: Historical memory and its ironies' by David Rieff

June–July 2016, no. 382 • 23 May 2016

Over the past three decades, and particularly since the prime ministership of John Howard, there has been an extraordinary growth in the number of young Australians making the pilgrimage to Gallipoli. Most of these people have no ancestors among the 'fallen', but rather are following what has become a rite of passage for patriotic young Australians. Lest we forget, they intone. But what exactly is ... (read more)

Carol

ABR Arts • 08 January 2016

It is a Hollywood staple: C meets T; they fall in love; obstacles stand in their way (a husband, a boyfriend, but most particularly the attitudes of the 1950s); obstacles are mostly overcome, and C and T march happily into the future together. In Todd Haynes's film, Cate Blanchett plays Carol, a soon-to-be-divorced, sophisticated mother of a four-year-old who falls for the younger, unworldly, beso ... (read more)

Andrea Goldsmith reviews 'Curiosity' by Alberto Manguel

September 2015, no. 374 • 26 August 2015

There are two broad approaches to reading Alberto Manguel’s Curiosity. The first type of reader will study the book – or rather, the text – assiduously connecting the personal narratives that introduce each chapter with the books Manguel references in the more theoretical and discursive aspects that follow. Dante’s Commedia is a constant presence in Curiosity, so they will have their Dante ... (read more)

Andrea Goldsmith reviews 'Susan Sontag: A biography' by Daniel Schreiber, translated by David Dollenmayer and 'Susan Sontag' by Jerome Boyd Maunsell

March 2015, no. 369 • 26 February 2015

At the age of eight I wanted to be a novelist. By the age of eighteen, having fallen in love with an intellectual, I aspired to be a novelist with sturdy intellectual credentials. There was much work to be done. My beloved set me a course of essential reading, including Susan Sontag’s first two essay collections and her two early novels. ... (read more)

Andrea Goldsmith reviews 'Singing for All He’s Worth: Essays in Honour of Jacob G. Rosenberg' edited by Alex Skovron, Raimond Gaita, and Alex Miller

November 2011, no. 336 • 25 October 2011

With the likes of Helen Garner, Arnold Zable, and Chris Wallace-Crabbe, the contents page of this essay collection reads like a who’s who of Australian literature. The editor–contributors are the poet Alex Skovron, philosopher Raimond Gaita, and novelist Alex Miller. The publisher is Picador. The man honoured in these essays is Jacob Rosenberg. ... (read more)